This will be short and sweet --- and moving chronologically in reverse --- as I don't have a whole lot of time to spare, as I'm trying to get everything together to head down to the islands tomorrow for my island ecology course. It's my final course with ISDSI, which is great. And it should be a good time. I've heard it's far more about laying in the sun, snorkeling, kyaking and drinking mango shakes than any sort of trace of academic learnin'. And in all honesty, fine with me. So yes, that's where I will be, the Adang Archipelego, for the next two and a half weeks or so. I'll be back on the 31st, I believe.

This week has been bearable at best. I've had the normal rigors of seminar week (the first week of every course, before we go out into the field), which means full school days (8-5), which I haven't had to deal with in a few years, plus a fair amount of reading. Un/fortunately, I've been able to supplement my time at nights with a pirated copy of the third season of Arrested Development, arguably the most clever show to every be put on television.

For the week before this week, my mom was over here for the last week of my break, which was fun. I probably don't need to go into that too much though, considering she's the only one who reads this. Before that I just read a ton. I read these books: You Shall Know Our Velocity!, The Hours, Beloved, White Noise, and am now working on Eggers' newest, What is the What. All are good.

Before that: Arrived in Thailand --- Sophomore year of college --- First year --- high school --- middle school --- little kid --- And then I was born.

More when I'm tanner.

Last night, in all our holiday joy, Nick and I decided to go out to our favorite classy joint, Berlin, for a drink or two. We were there, minding our own business, when all of a sudden the waiter comes up and hands us a paper coaster and says it's for us. We look at it, and there's a flirtatious message, of course. We ask who it's from, but who won't tell us. We find the whole thing rather ridiculous, so we decide to have some fun with it. The following images are re-creations, in sequence, of those anonymous paper coasters, shadows of a Christmas night rendevous between two dashing (only one of whom is heterosexual) American studs and two unknown Thai women, supposedly named Niel and Daniel. If it's difficult to read/see the pictures, just click on them to open up a bigger version.


Maybe we scared them away? We are truly children.

New pictures up on my photo site. Heads up.

There's not a lot, mostly because I haven't done a whole lot worthy of taking pictures in the past month, and if I have, it was probably at night and I hate the flash. So you gets what you gets. They're actually mostly pictures I've taken of stuff around the city, in a half-hearted attempt to take a quality artistic photograph. A few of these I've touched up a bit on the computer, you know, full disclosure, credit-where-credit-is-due, and all.

Merry Christmas.

So, as you all should now, I've been on break for a week now.

And I've done next to nothing.

But I'm quite okay with that. It's been nice to have some down time to work things over, relax, read, on and on.

But here's what I've done:

I spent nearly every day last week bumming around, trying to stretch "going to get something to eat" into something significant enough to make me feel like I didn't waste a day. All in all, I'd say I did a pretty good job. Sorry, but there's really not a whole lot else to say on that front.

I did see some movies, though. First, the good ones (which we rented): Batman (original, by Tim Burton) and Lost in Translation. I don't really need to talk about Batman do I? I liked it a lot, enough said. Moving on::::::: Lost in Translation was amazing. It was my second time seeing it, though the first time was a few years ago, and, well, in the States. Seeing it in Asia was completely different, and so much more meaningful. The movie expressed so well what it's like being in an Asian country -- how weird, alienating, confusing, and irritating it can be, and usually is. Not to mention the fact that the movie was just beautiful. It really inspired me to try to use the rest of my time on this break working on some sort of creative project, focusing on what it's like for me here and try to express some element (or all) of my relationship with this place. Well, I saw that movie last Wednesday, I think it was, and Thursday I went out and bought a notebook, because you need a new notebook for things such as this, and went to the hip hip cafe next door and set to writing. I wrote for an hour or so, the first time I had done any sort of creative writing in a while. And then, as I was walking home and then on into my night, I was just overcome with disgust for what I had written. It was garbage, sheer garbage, and I wanted nothing to do with it. A start like that has made it nearly impossible to return to the project, though I did spend a little time today taking pictures and writing. But I'll keep it at that.

Yikes.

So back to those movies, the bad ones: Deja Vu and The Holiday. Unfortunately, these were the ones we payed the big bucks to go see in the theaters. The fact that they were in the theaters also brought the plus/minus of popcorn: delicious, but ensuring the fact that I indeed would not luck out and die of starvation in the middle of one of these painful, atrocious movies. Deja Vu clearly was the unfortunate result of Jerry Bruckheimer reading, a little to quickly, a Wikipedia article on theoretical astrophysics. The Holiday was just plain unwatchable. Suffocatingly stupid. Ghha. I can't even bear to think about it. But it did provide some very very very (unintentionally) hilarious moments. Still though, hardly worth it.

And then there was the time that I went to my host family's house and made spaghetti with pesto and baguette and mozzarella and tomato for dinner. Of course they didn't like it. But that's just the kind of subtle revenge I was looking for, payback for eating the horrible food that made me think I hated Thai food for the first five weeks I was here (when now I realize that I really like it, when it's good). This ties in with a major point, here, if you'll bear with me. I might have talked about how we've learned in Thai culture classes how a major element of Thai culture is being kreng jai -- we don't have a word for it, but it's basically the act of saving face. So, if someone asks your opinion, and you don't want to hurt their feelings, you lie, and everyone benefits... some how. We basically do the same thing in the States, except I've found we do it in completely opposite ways: we just lie about different things, and are painfully blunt about others. We're not really taught this at ISDSI though, rather, they just stress how Thais are kreng jai kreng jai kreng jai kreng jai. One of the limits I've found is gifts. If you give someone a gift, or in this case make them dinner, and they don't like it, they will make little to no effort to pretend they do. Even if they get to the point of lying to say they like it, it's still so obvious that they don't. The same goes for conversation. And maybe it's just because I'm not very good at Thai, but it seems that whenever I'm talking about something, even if I'm trying to engage them in a conversation about it, if they're not interested, they just won't have any of it. That's it. Conversation over, not gonna listen. It's really frustrating, actually.

And that is the mini culture lesson.

And that is week one of winter break in Thailand.

So I'm on break now. It's kind of hard to register, after having to do stuff continually for the past four months or so. But hey, time to kick back. So this as much an entry out of wanting to do one as it is out of relishing the fact that I have the time to on a Saturday afternoon.

I figured I'd take this opportunity to talk a little bit about something that's becoming more and more common here: the occassional Larry David predicament. For those uninitiated into the ways of Curb Your Enthusiasm, it is a funny show (a comedy if you will) starring Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld, and one of the more absurd people to walk the planet and I love him. I won't bother explaining how my experiences mirror his -- if you know the show you'll get it and if you don't you won't. Deal.

So Larry David predicament one: The past four weeks have been kind of boring, with not much to do on the weekends or at night after work. On top of that, I've had a lot of disposable money lying around, owing to the favorable exchange rate and cheap price of food. Compound that with my temporary shirking of any sort of consumer ethic (kind of ironic, no?), and you've got a situation that just begs for recreational shopping. Well, a few weeks ago I decided I wanted some new jeans. But I didn't want just any jeans, I wanted straight and narrow lowrise jeans. Unfortunately, even in Thailand that's still not the norm for men's jeans, and even if it was my skinny little fram would still not suit them well. So naturally I decided to look into women's jeans. And so I went to the department store (which is just like any JC Penny, Marshall Fields, etc. in the States), and was looking at the Wranglers section. The first time I went, I had a very helpful sales woman who, after I asked if they had any men's jeans that were straight and skinny, directed me to the women's section. She gave me some, I tried them on, and I liked them. But I didn't want to buy them just yet, so I told her I'd come back later after thinking about it. A few days later, I did go back. Except this time there was a different guy working. I pretended to show interest in the men's jeans, just to break the ice, before making my way to the women's section. The guy followed me over, telling me in Thai that they were women's jeans. I said (in Thai), that I understood and that I liked them more anyway. He must have thought I was completely stupid (as do most Thai people), because he kept repeating it, and then said it in English. I was annoyed and told him to not worry about it, and so he just walked away, quite miffed. And so I took a pair, tried them on, found them too short, and returned to find another pair. When I came out, the I said they were too short and he replied curtly "Because they're for women". So so so rude. And so I left, completely bothered. The nerve of this snottly little twenty-eight year old Thai man with bad acne and braces telling me I can't buy the jeans I want. I decided I would just come back later when he's not there. So I went back a week later or so, and scouted out the situation from afar. I could practically hear the frumpy tuba theme from Curb bump-bump-bumping the background. And sure enough, there he was, smuggly lording over the Wranglers section, ready to reinforce prohibitive gender roles on the drop of a dime. And so just like that I left. And then I came back later yet. And he was still there. And so I left. And that's where I'm at today. I clearly can't return and try some more on and try to buy them from that man. It's not so much that he won't let me, but he's just an enemy now, and I'm vowing, with Larry David as my witness, to uphold this spontaneous grudge against this low-level retail worker abusing his power. It's a matter of principle, dammit.

There's another similar predicament, but I'm running out of time on this computer, so I'll have to save that for another day, of which there will be plenty, as I ain't got nothing to do.